This week, I finished reading What My Bones Know, an intense, beautiful memoir from the journalist Stephanie Foo about healing from Complex PTSD. Thoroughly researched and impossibly lucid, the book is a great service to the mental health profession and field, to all those suffering from complex PTSD, and to anyone in love, community, relationship with a traumatized person or people. 

I’ve been on my own Complex PTSD healing trip for the last 3-4 years, and reading this memoir granted me a peace and love that I still struggle to find at this point in my journey. I came down with a small summer cold for a couple days, and I got to lay in bed for a day reading. It felt like the most comforting hug throughout my bedrest; I felt unbelievably witnessed and infinitely less alone in my experiences. In fact, my journey so similarly matched Foo’s that it felt as close as I could get to reading back my own diary entries from the last couple of years (if I had kept one!). 

I’ve already recommended the book onward to one person who wants to understand his partner’s struggles more, and to one person who wants to understand his own. They’ve both already started the book and have gained tremendous insight. As was my experience, they both couldn’t put it down, even as self-described “not big readers”. As Stephanie Foo shares forcefully at the end of the memoir, love begets love, and I feel strongly that every time this book gets read, it’s indeed an act of love begetting more love ❤️